on top of that, the huge expansion of economy such as china and india means that in our working lifetimes, the size of the european economy relative to address the world looks set to shrink dramatically. projections have shown europe's share of the world economy declining from 18% to 10% by the middle of the century, and even the united states is not immune from the effect of economic problems. this diminished economic weight will have a major impact on the ability of western nations to achieve their foreign policy goals. we are used to the idea of calling for economic sanctions against nations whose human rights records we find an acceptable. south africa under apartheid being a celebrated example. now we apply them to recalcitrant and regimes. it is already clear that the power of such economic weapons is declining. it follows from this analysis that it will decline much further in the years to come. what is more, much of the economic weight in the world is passing the countries which either do not fully share our concepts of democracy and human rights or for their own reasons are oppos